RA: You’ve written that your music “unravels what you thought was healed, and heals what you didn’t know was broken.” With your upcoming EP, Handle with Care, acting as a new chapter for you, could you share a specific lyric from this project that embodies that theme of healing?
EDR: I recently released the first single off my EP, Handle With Care. One of my favorite lyrics from that song, Garden, is “all the thorns and the weeds that brought you to your knees bloom into clover and rose”. When you’re planting a garden you are literally brought to your knees as you kneel down to work with the soil. It can sometimes feel futile when you are covered in dirt putting so much faith in this tiny little seed. It takes time and patience, but it’s important not to give up hope because you never know when you’re going to bloom. I wrote this song as a message to my younger self, my current self, and anyone who might be waiting for the seeds to grow.
RA: As a self-producing artist, you navigate the technical and the emotional simultaneously. When you’re in the studio, how do you balance the precision of your classical training with the need for raw, unfiltered vulnerability?
EDR: I’ve always experienced and created music in an intuitive way and heavily lean on my ear and my intuition when I am producing and writing. When I was studying classical flute in my undergrad, what impacted my creative practice most wasn’t necessarily learning the names of chords, but being exposed to different styles of music and absorbing different ways of composing and performing. The way the music feels as a listener is really important to me in my creative practice. That drives my curiosity when I write with other artists and I love going down the rabbit hole with people to explore ideas and possibilities.